A week before he was gunned down, 30-year-old Zachary Carpenter pressed his hands into soil beneath Interstate 610, and built a community garden under an underpass.

The space, near the corner of Paris Avenue and Pleasure Street in Gentilly, was adjacent to the popular skatepark Parasite, a site that Carpenter had helped establish, and a place he spent much of his free time working to improve.

Carpenter dug and planted, and after he finished, he characteristically got on his skateboard, and started to shred.

Friends and family gathered at the park Sunday afternoon to honor Carpenter, who one person called "the skateboarding philanthropist." Rather than grieve, they grilled hot dogs and popped wheelies.

Carpenter, who family members say moved to New Orleans eight months after Hurricane Katrina to help the rebuilding effort, was a skilled laborer with construction experience, but eventually settled at a job at Best Buy, where he had worked until recently.

His real passion, however, was skateboarding, friends said, adding that his zeal for the sport was infectious. Carpenter spent nearly every day at the Gentilly skatepark, teaching younger children how to skate.

"This was the place he loved," said friend Blaine Billings. "Skateboarding was Zach."

Carpenter was shot and killed May 11, allegedly during a botched marijuana drug deal, New Orleans police officials said.

NOPD officers on Wednesday arrested 18-year-old Darryl Watson, who confessed to police that he pulled the trigger because he thought Carpenter was trying to take his money without exchanging the weed. Watson said that when he gave the money to Carpenter, he began to drive away.

As Carpenter drove away from the 4500 block of Elysian Fields Avenue, where the two had agreed to meet, Watson shot Carpenter once in the head. Carpenter's car then veered off the road, struck a tree and caught fire. Watson was charged with one count of first degree murder, officials said.

The circumstances baffled the murder victim's friends and family, who on Sunday recalled a different Zachary Carpenter: The one who spent his Saturdays at the skate park, teaching teens how to master new tricks and cooking burgers for everyone.

"One time he brought everything to make the burgers, except utensils," friend Eric Muller said. "So he had to flip the patties with a concrete leveling hand tool."

He served as a mentor to skaters at the park, and logged long hours on his board, pushing his friends to do that same.

"I used to fall and give up on tricks, but he always pushed me to do better," Elijah "Money" Thomas, 17, said. "I learned a lot from him."

On Sunday, the roar of grinding skateboard wheels grew quiet as family sprinkled Carpenter's ashes in the skate park garden. Balloons were then released in his memory.